Abstract
Economic hardship among divorced women—particularly mothers—is a longstanding policy concern. Most research in this area has causally examined women’s labor supply in relation to divorce or concentrated on post-divorce outcomes alone. Less attention has been paid to understanding mothers’ pre-divorce economic outcomes, although they have an important bearing on their post-divorce economic circumstances. The present study addresses this gap by using court records data on divorce cases linked to administrative employment records in Wisconsin to examine economic circumstances of married mothers with children at the time of filing the divorce petition, and how they evolve over three years leading up to it. The study introduces a new measure of economic vulnerability and carries out a descriptive analysis of mothers’ employment, earnings, and economic circumstances in the years preceding a divorce and compares them with the outcomes of fathers. Results show that despite significant increases in labor supply and earnings in the time leading up to divorce, mothers remain economically more vulnerable than fathers going into divorce, with over 44% of mothers (compared to 27% fathers) unable to support themselves and their children above the poverty line with their own earnings. Findings also suggest that mothers with younger children are worse off in terms of earnings and employment than mothers of older children although such differences are less pronounced for fathers. Implications for post-divorce cost-sharing of children, work, and safety net policies are discussed.
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Data Availability
The data that support the findings of this study are housed at the Institute for Research on Poverty; data have been provided by state agencies and are subject to data use restrictions and prior authorization requirements. Researchers with access to state administrative data complete data security training and sign a confidentiality agreement. IRP programming staff merge confidential data and provide datasets for analysis with personal identifiers removed. Data is stored and analyzed on a secure server.
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Acknowledgements
The research reported here was supported in part by the Child Support Research Agreement between the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families and the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The author of this article is solely responsible for the content. The author would like to thank the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families and Department of Workforce Development for the use of data for these analyses, but these agencies do not certify the accuracy of the data presented. Views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily the sponsoring institution. The author is grateful to Dr. Judith Bartfeld, several seminar and conference participants, and anonymous reviewers for valuable feedback at every stage of developing this manuscript.
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Funding was provided by Wisconsin Department of Children and Families (Grant no. 437004-A19-0001350-000-01).
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Chanda, T. Economic Wellbeing and Labor Supply Patterns of Subsequently Divorcing Mothers in Wisconsin. J Fam Econ Iss 44, 821–835 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-022-09875-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-022-09875-8